Reader Comments and Retorts

Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.

I think Alabama is going to greatly regret hiring Kiffin as OC, unless they have an aesthetic fetish for the bubble screen—which is the only play Kiffin knows how to call.

alabama will have a great defense, a great offensive line, great runningbacks and an inexperienced quarterback. as kiffin as kiffin's career has been, i can't believe that saban will let him screw things up too badly.

Nick Saban builds great defenses and wins a lot of football games, but that doesn't mean he has any special magic insight into Lane Kiffin that fundamentally changes the fact that he's an uncreative OC who doesn't bring much to the table as a playcaller or offensive designer. Maybe Saban's hired him for his recruiting acumen, though Alabama has never really had much trouble in that department.

Good people made bad decisions all the time. Mike Scioscia ran Mike Napoli out of town in favor of Jeff Mathis. Billy Beane traded Carlos Gonzalez for half a season of Matt Holliday. In this scenario, you can look into Saban's eyes and hear sweet music, but I can tell you for a fact that Lane Kiffin is a #### coach, and being hired by Nick Saban doesn't change that fact.

I'm sure Alabama will be fine, but it won't be because they hired Lane "Bubble Screen" Kiffin to be their OC.

Some NFL players around Kiffin's age are still playing (Peyton Manning is ten months younger than Kiffin) but this is his fifth high-profile coaching job. He hasn't done much at all in the last three, and I'm not sure how much credit he deserves for his time on Pete Carroll's staff. Recruiting skills and interview-ability can get you far.

Some NFL players around Kiffin's age are still playing (Peyton Manning is ten months younger than Kiffin) but this is his fifth high-profile coaching job. He hasn't done much at all in the last three, and I'm not sure how much credit he deserves for his time on Pete Carroll's staff. Recruiting skills and interview-ability can get you far.

I don't think he gets any of these jobs if Al Davis hadn't plucked him out of obscurity. It's funny what the whim of an old man trying to relive the glories of his past can do.

Some NFL players around Kiffin's age are still playing (Peyton Manning is ten months younger than Kiffin) but this is his fifth high-profile coaching job. He hasn't done much at all in the last three, and I'm not sure how much credit he deserves for his time on Pete Carroll's staff. Recruiting skills and interview-ability can get you far.

Everyone is downplaying the recruiting skills, but they're real, and they're spectacular. Kiffin is an A+ recruiter. He's obviously not the king of playcalling. He seems to have done an OK, though not great, job developing players at USC.

Saban is a smart enough guy to use Kiffin for what he is good at, which is an incredibly valuable skill at the college level. I certainly wouldn't want Kiffin as an NFL coordinator.

Kiffin does seem to have a way of connecting with recruits; I'm not sure why, or what it is about that loathsome little weasel that high school seniors find so appealing, but then I'm not a hyper-talented 18-year-old with grown men begging for the right to pay for my time at college, so that's probably not a mindset I'm ever going to be able to fully grasp.

I do think he did good work with Jonathan Crompton at Tennessee in 2009. Crompton was a dumpster fire in 2008, and he was at least reasonably competent under Kiffin's tutelage the next year. He might even be a back-up QB in the NFL still. That's a feather (perhaps the only one) in Kiffin's cap.

Monte (Papa) Kiffin has worked for about 9 NFL clubs, and five major college programs including a few 'helmet schools'. There have got to be very few coaches out there with as large of a network. Other than a falling out with Gruden at TB, I don't recall him being a bridgeburner anywhere

Lane Kiffin getting job after job is not at all surprising to me. For all the self-inflicted #### he has caused, forgotten in this, was his staunch opposition to drafting Jamarcus Russell.

Kiffin has proven he can coordinate a successful offense if he's given a couple of dozen really good players and a bunch of other coaches who know what they're doing.

When did he do that? He was a horrible, horrible offensive coordinator whenever given the chance at USC. The worst. I'm sure Saban is hoping to draw off his recruiting connections (but really, Alabama needs help in recruiting?) but he'll have the keys taken away from him as a playcaller in short order.

Under Kiffin and Sarkisian in 2005 the USC offense produced numerous school records, averaging 49.1 points and 579 yards per game and becoming the first in NCAA history to have a 3,000 yard passer (Matt Leinart), two 1,000 yard rushers (Reggie Bush and LenDale White), and a 1,000 yard receiver (Dwayne Jarrett). Steve Smith fell a few yards of also surpassing 1,000 yards in receiving. In Kiffin’s three years as recruiting coordinator at USC, the Trojans had the No. 1 ranked recruiting class in college football every year. The Trojans finished first in the Pac-10 in passing efficiency by averaging 142.8 passer rating, produced two, 1,000-yard receivers – Dwayne Jarrett (1,105) and Steve Smith (1,083) – and a 3,000-yard passer John David Booty, with 3,347 yards. The team produced top 20 statistics in most NCAA offensive categories and concluded with a 32–18 win over the then #3 ranked team the University of Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Kiffin helped guide USC to a 23–3 win-loss record during his tenure as offensive coordinator, an 88% win percentage

Now, you can probably argue that Sark was just as responsible for that stuff, but that is a heck of a resume.

USC's offense also vastly improved from Carroll's last season at USC to the Lane Kiffin era (which remember was hit by scholarship reductions). USC went from 26 PPG/389 YPG to 31 PPG/437 YPG and 35 PPG/456 YPG.

Is Lane Kiffin a guy who was born on third base and thought he got a triple...sure he is. I don't he is a terrible OC by any stretch (and his offense for the most part have been pretty good, someone already mentioned his one year stint at Tennessee and the job he did with Crompton).

It does come to trust Saban though. I think Saban more than knows the baggage that comes with the Lane Kiffin hire. Perhaps he outsmarted himself, he did swing and miss with his first OC hire (Major Applewhite) before hitting it out of the park with McElwain and Nussmeier.

Kiffin spent a year at Tenn, but otherwise all his recruiting connections would be on the west coast. Doesn't seem like it'd be an asset at Bama, but maybe Saban likes opening up another recruiting area.

Now, you can probably argue that Sark was just as responsible for that stuff, but that is a heck of a resume.

Right, if this were 2006. A few things have happened since then. I wouldn't let Lane Kiffin watch practice of my favorite team, much less be allowed to "coach" the players. I'm sure Saban will short-leash him but it's a pretty big gamble.

Does anyone think that Kiffin is somehow going to put a wrench into the Saban machine? At worst, Kiffin screws up this season and Saban fires him. However, Saban exerts so much control over everything and everyone that its really all on him and no one can come close to his success in the "modern" era of college football. . Plus Alabama has a lot of talent - some of it may be young and raw, but that program's talent evaluation and development has a pretty good record.

i'm not sure if this is on anyone else's radar, but penn state DL coach larry johnson sr. just took the same job at ohio state. johnson is one of the best assistants in college football in terms of both coaching and recruiting and it's kind of a huge loss, made even hugerer by the fact that he didn't just leave, but he left to go to their biggest conference rival.

I see some Title Game ticket information is leaking out. The 'premium pricing' is out, and the cheapest premium ticket will be at around $1900, which includes an upper corner game ticket, and a 3 hour hospitality event with food/top shelf drink and a $50 merchandise credit.

Regular joe blow tickets won't be priced publicly until next week or so, but with the old BCS ticket being $325 to walk in the door, can you say $600 (my guess)? This will not include your Conference Championship game , or the semifinal game played the week earlier at some other neutral site before you even get to Jerry World.

I don't think anyone has given serious thought to how absurd it is to ask fans to possibly travel to three straight neutral site games located coast to coast on six days notice. College football has unmatched atmosphere in American sports, this system is certain to rip the soul of the sport out of its biggest games.

The NFL has but one neutral site game. MLB and NBA have none, the NHL has none, unless you count the winter classic, which is always played in a home city with 1 year notice.

I don't think anyone has given serious thought to how absurd it is to ask fans to possibly travel to three straight neutral site games located coast to coast on six days notice. College football has unmatched atmosphere in American sports, this system is certain to rip the soul of the sport out of its biggest games.

It's kind of hard to say UF underperformed on the recruiting trail this year, no?

It is. But when you're coming off a 4-8 season, you're sort of in "bring in as much talent as humanly possible" mode, so it sucks more than a little to see quality players like Lane and Valentine go to rivals.

Especially when Lane is joining Dalvin Cook, another former Florida commit who's one of the best running back prospects in the country.

Alabama pulled in Rivals best class since they began their Rivals250 in 2008. They signed 19 guys from ESPN's top 300. They signed 11 of Rival's Top 100 players. The Big Ten has 12 of the top 100 guys...combined (if I counted right).

Apparently FAMU had a kid committed to them for over a year and last night they called to tell him he doesn't have a scholarship waiting for him. Their supposed reason was his test scores even though they had previously told him he was fine (and he's NCAA eligible).

Why does the NCAA make schools wait to make written scholarship offers if they aren't even true offers? This kind of bullshit is patently unjust.

Picking up Andrew Williams and Braden Smith were big gets for Auburn, but losing out on Evans - an Auburn High kid whose dad was an AU player... well it was the only dark cloud, but it was a big one. Still, another Top Ten class, which is awesome for a school surrounded by higher profile SEC programs.

Alston's basic theory is that the NCAA and its member institutions, along with the five major conferences, have unlawfully conspired to save money at the expense of Division I football players. This comes in the form of athletic scholarships (grants-in-aid), which are capped to include the cost of tuition, room and board, books and fees and, until recently, were only guaranteed for one year. Alston charges that these limitations make athletic scholarships several thousand dollars lower in value than the actual cost of attending college and are substantially less valuable than if there were a free market. The NCAA, according to Alston, has "cloaked its actions in government-terminology, such as 'constitution' ... and 'infraction'" to lawmakers into accepting this system as fair.